Sunday Submissions: ‘Close Approximations’ Prize

Asymptote is accepting entries for the fourth edition of their international translation contest, “Close Approximations”:

The deadline is October 1, 2018.

Open to emerging translators, the annual contest welcomes translations in fiction and poetry. Each category will have a winner and two runners-up, who will win (respectively) $1,000 USD and $250 USD worth of prizes.

The judges are Edward Gauvin (for fiction), and Eugene Ostashevsky (for poetry).

According to the guidelines:

Submit between 5 to 10 pages of translated poetry or between 10 to 25 pages of translated fiction via the ‘Contest’ option of our Submittable page, in the appropriate category by 1 October, 2018, along with your entry fee of 20 USD. To encourage earlier submissions, we are charging a lower entry fee of 17 USD for submissions on or before 1 September, 2018.

The rules also note:

We ask that submissions be limited to translations of writers who have yet to appear widely in English but are generally available in their native tongue. As an example, Sappho is considered widely published in English, even if freshly translated. In contrast, an author with only a small fraction of his or her work published in English translation (or none at all) would be a perfect candidate for the contest.

Translations must be into English, but may come from any language besides English. Although we especially welcome contemporary work translated from underrepresented languages, neither the work’s original language or its contemporaneity will be a factor in the judging.

Find out more at www.asymptotejournal.com/contest/.